


To Sleep

by draculard



Category: Coraline - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Cigarettes, Dubious Consent, F/F, First Time, Growing Up, Loss of Virginity, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-10-01 18:48:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20370661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: The fight is over and her family has moved to a small, chic apartment in the city, but Coraline still sees the Other Mother in her dreams.





	To Sleep

The fight is over and her family has moved to a small, chic apartment in the city, but Coraline still sees the Other Mother in her dreams. 

Things are different now. Coraline is a little older and wiser. She knows not to trust her nightmares or to crawl through small, unfamiliar doors. She’s confident that when she left the old house behind, she left the Other Mother, too. She’s smart enough not to mention her dreams to Mom and Dad, who wouldn’t understand anyway.

She’s not sure she understands herself.

The Other Mother’s twisted version of kindness and hospitality has changed. She touches Coraline more now, hugs traded for kisses  — and not the quick, chaste kisses she’s accustomed to from her real Mom. The Other Mother’s lips linger on her skin; every touch is electric, cold. 

She thinks about the ghost children she met and wonders if they ever experienced this. If so, would they have told her? She certainly hasn’t told anybody; she pushes her food around on her plate at family meals and gives brief, one-word answers to any questions. She wears long sleeves to school, her own skin feeling itchy and too small.

And she looks forward to bedtime again.

Maybe that’s the worst part.

* * *

It’s the Other Mother who teaches Coraline what an orgasm is, years before any of her classmates figure it out firsthand. When she closes her eyes at night, she finds herself back in that warped version of her house with the Other Mother’s fingers grasping her thigh, the knuckles cracking and lengthening, the tips of them dipping inside Coraline.

Her nails are a little too sharp. Her kisses always end in a little bite. Coraline tells herself that no matter how bad the nightmares get, at least she knows they aren’t real like the old ones are. At least they can’t follow her during the day.

Then she wakes up, muscles still spasming with pleasure.

Then she wakes up and sees the livid bruises on her neck. 

* * *

At fifteen, Coraline takes up smoking behind her mother’s back. There’s a corner store down the block from her school where the clerk never asks for ID; she hides the cigarettes in a false drawer in her desk. She smokes them with the window open and douses the smell in cheap perfume; her mom thinks that Coraline, like every other girl her age, just doesn’t know how much perfume is appropriate. She doesn’t think for a second that there might be another, even more unpleasant smell lurking underneath.

It’s the Other Mother who notices. She kisses Coraline and then she pulls away, nose wrinkling.

She says, “You’ve been smoking, dear.”

Coraline only shrugs. Her legs are spread, her trousers abandoned at the foot of the bed. Her top is still on; she doesn’t bother taking it off anymore.

She’s not in the mood for a lecture. She doesn’t want to think about the fact that the Other Mother noticed when her real mom didn’t.

She hooks her legs around the Other Mother’s waist and pulls her down.

“Make me come,” she says. For a moment, the Other Mother just stares down at her, her button eyes mere inches from Coraline’s own. Blank, unreadable. 

She acquiesces.

She always does.

* * *

When Coraline has sex in the real world, for the very first time, it feels like a let-down. She stops paying attention halfway through, staring at the ceiling above her lover’s head. She tries not to think about her lack of interest.

Tries not to think about the Other Mother fucking her instead.

She feels her partner working up to an orgasm; she feels her body refusing to respond.

She can’t wait to go home again.

She can’t wait to go to sleep.


End file.
